Wednesday, May 3, 2017

Trump's America: Greene County, Pennsylvania (coal country)

But while the industry as a whole isn’t that large, job losses in the coal industry have an outsize effect, devastating coal towns (partly via multiplying effects). That’s because coal workers tend to be concentrated in small areas, around mines.

Nemacolin is among scores of company-built towns in southwestern Pennsylvania that dot the rail lines and rivers used to haul coal to steel mills and power plants. But today, decades after the mines shuttered, the towns show what remains when an industry responsible for building a region leaves it behind.

Since the Buckeye Mine shut down in the eighties, Nemacolin’s elementary school burned down in a suspected arson. The store closed and the swimming pool was filled with dirt. Many of the duplex houses now sit vacant, roofs missing, tagged with graffiti and looted, verging on collapse. And the citizens’ group left with the town’s charter lacks funding and resources for large-scale change